you've been running up hills and running too slow
by RoyalVictory
Summary: The night after the exercise isn't the worst of Artemis' life, but it comes dangerously close.


It feels like drowning.

That's your first thought after you wake up from the exercise, gasping and shaking. You're crying a little too, you realize as you let Red Tornado help you sit up and you feel the wetness in your eyelashes and on your cheeks. Your throat feels raw but you don't know why. You hadn't screamed when you died; there wasn't time for that.

_Oh_.

Right. You were dead, not long ago. So why are you breathing now?

The debrief happens. You don't catch much, just bits and fragments pressed together like a puzzle missing pieces. It feels like someone has chosen pieces from a different puzzle to fill the voids, forced in and wedged until there is some semblance of an idea of what happened. It was all for practice. You all agreed to it. You can't remember why.

(Years from now, you'll still shiver at the word 'exercise'.)

You were in the Arctic in the beginning. You remember the cold and the exact words Wally used to tease you about how you looked like a snow ermine. But your memories stop in the cold and they hang there, chilling your insides. You have to be told what happened after.

You died, but it wasn't real. You all died in the end, just like you all will anyways. You tell yourself the last bit to try and ease the ache in your skull and the weight of your bones. It doesn't.

Just weeks ago, you were positive you could count the people who would mourn your death on one hand. Now you aren't so sure.

You're first to leave the debriefing, half running with shaky knees when Batman _finally_ begins the first syllable of 'dismissed'. You almost don't hear his orders to stay until you are discharged in the morning. You don't hear his explanation for them.

You feel these orders pressing on your lungs, like the little smiling demons you've been running from all your life. (You _will _outrun them someday.) All you want to do is go home and hug your mother and drink a cup of her tea. You want to stare at your ratty Alice in Wonderland poster and distract yourself with bad memories. You want to escape the looks you were smothered with during the debrief.

You don't know where you're going. You do know you pass the kitchen, because you smell whatever is being cooked and it makes you feel like throwing up. When you pass the weight room, you hear Conner beating the living crap out of a punching bag and you think you might hear him crying too. It's the first time your feet almost stop, the first time they actually slow for a fraction of a second and hesitate, until you hear someone else whispering, already comforting him. It's all for the best; you don't know what you would say anyways.

You keep moving. You keep shaking. At least the wetness on your lashes has dried.

...

Gotham is in your blood. It sparks the instinct inside to get as close to the sky as possible, to climb to the greatest heights that you can. It's why you find yourself sitting on the side of the mountain, ten feet from the hatch you climbed through. You tug your knees to your chest and make yourself as small as possible.

Part of you prays to the stars to swallow you whole. It'd be easier that way.

You left your jacket and boots back in the hatch. You don't really know why. Maybe you'd thought Atlas' newly gifted burden would remain with them. Maybe you'd thought those demons would wait with them. In any case, you were wrong.

Thoughts eat away at you. Mostly, they center on your insecurities. Kaldur died. Conner died. Robin and Wally died. M'gann died. All of them, the whole team, died to save the world. They sacrificed themselves so that they could save each other. _They all died for a purpose. _And you? You died because you weren't fast enough; you weren't good enough. You just didn't cut it. You never really have, actually. You probably never will.

Wally was right. You don't belong on this team. The thought puts a sour taste in your mouth and a sting in your eye.

...

Time passes. You are intimately acquainted with each second. You know the excruciating speed of the seconds hand on a clock. You feel the tick in your skin.

It's colder now. The wind has picked up and it shoves your ponytail and clothing enough to make you climb off the roof and back into the hatch. You leave your boots and jacket where they are and trudge on without them.

The cave is silent. It's never been like this before, not even when the Reds took over the place. You can't even hear the traffic from Central City, kept out by solid stone. It's almost scary for you, for someone who has grown up with noise that is as constant as air. Your ears have always been filled with late night traffic and sirens. Your lullaby is that of the city. Its absence makes itself known.

You still don't know where you're going, or what you're doing. You haven't ever really known, actually, so it shouldn't matter. You wonder if that's poetic.

You lean your back against a hall in the dark and sink to the floor, shaking all over again. Your arms embrace your legs and your head drops to your knees. Finally, your eyes start to truly tear up. Your bones creak and weep with you.

...

You pass by Robin in locker rooms. He's seated on a bench and isn't facing you, elbows on his knees and face in his hands. His sunglasses are beside him on the bench. Robin has discarded his jacket and left himself in a thin t shirt that shows just how boney and scrawny he is. He's so _small_.

You see a white scar that snakes up from beneath his shirt and onto his neck, dangerously close to his spinal cord. You wonder who caused it, and why.

It's the first time that you actually realize that he's just a _kid_. He took up the mantle when he was nine; he would've been in _third_ _grade_. You wonder if he ever got the chance to have a childhood. You hope he did, because everyone deserves a childhood, even if you yourself never did get one.

...

You hear this terrible sobbing coming from M'gann's room. The kind that wrenches your heart from your chest and throws it to the floor. It's the uncontrollable kind, the kind that makes you throw yourself across your bed as your body lets out its anguish. It's the kind of sobbing that leaves you empty and hollow. It's the kind of sobbing you remember from the earliest years of your youth.

You hate yourself for not having the courage to stop walking and knock on the door.

...

When you walk past the dark and empty weight room, you wonder where Conner has gone. You don't know where Kaldur is either, and you're a little thankful. Conner is the rock and Kaldur is the leader. Seeing one of them broken would just make everything much _much _worse.

...

"Don't tell me you weren't jumping for joy when I kicked it!" You point your finger at the red-haired-green-eyed boy in front of you, grief turned to fury and screams. You honestly can't say how you got here. All you know is one moment you're walking and the next you're shouting.

(More than anything ever, you want this night to be over.)

"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" The passion from his voice shoves you back a stumbled step. "YOU **DIED**. I WOULD _**NEVER**_ BE HAPPY ABOUT THAT, ARTEMIS!" He marches towards you and some stupid part of you is afraid he's going to hit you. Instead, he wraps his arms around you so quickly that you slam into his chest when he hugs you. He holds you tighter than anyone has ever done before; it kind of hurts, but you don't mind it. The pain takes away the numbness you were feeling moments ago. It's a good hurt, the kind that makes you feel safe, _truly safe, _for the first time as far back as you can remember.

You don't know how long you stand there, but you do know you stand there a long time, gripping onto him like he's some kind of anchor to keep you on this earth. He returns the favour, holding tight to your shoulder and waist. You're sure you'll have bruises in the morning. You don't care. You stop shaking.

When you finally get a hold of yourself and push him away, you see his eyes are tinted red and there's shining lines that stripe his cheeks like bars of a prison cell.

Your throat closes and your lungs panic and oh god, you're going to cry again but you _can't_. Not in front of him, not now. So you turn and run in the opposite direction, partly praying that he won't follow you. Partly praying he will.

He doesn't.

...

When Batman dismisses you the next morning, you're first out of the room, before he even finishes his sentence. You run with shaking knees and creaking bones to the zeta tubes. You hear someone say your name, but you don't know who it is. You aren't brave enough to look back.


End file.
